On The Edge Of An Hourglass
by Garbageman1
Summary: Ash is young and have much to learn. The wanderlust within him extends to the extreme, and is about to burst. Out in the dangerous woods Ash and professor Oak meet perils and great obsticals, which they must learn to overcome to survive. A political timeshift is upon the world of Kanto as Ash catch and train his Pokemon. (Have a read, it's very good.) (Rated M)
1. Chapter 1

Hi everyone. I have been wanting to write a _darker_ story in the Pokémon universe (I do not own Pokémon and have not / will not be receiving pay or anything like that) I hope most of you who clicked this story will give (read) it a chance to the end of the chapter before deciding whether you enjoyed it or not. Leave a like (or dislike) comment and favourite if you wish to. I will try to write each chapter between 7000 and 8000 words. And release one chapter once a week. I am not English, and it is a foreign language to me, so please forgive my errors. I pray that you enjoy the read as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

Thank you.

* * *

Chapter One Ash and Oak

Ash hadn´t seen the stooping ridge and, as he whistled on a tune, took a contrite step forward. Pebbles and dust mixed with invisible air, creating a maelstrom. If anyone but Ash was near they would hear the thunderous roar as Ash tumbled like a lose boulder down the steep hillside.

"Help me!" Ash screamed inside a cluster of dust. He swallowed sand and mud as he screamed from the top of his lungs. "Anyone please, I need your help, I fell and…" Damn was he injured? He checked his head: no blood and no ache. He checked his chest for wounds and rifts, and found that there were none. His arms and legs were fine too. He cursed his own stupidity, and then jolted back up the hillside.

There were plenty of deadwood to hold onto; he noticed how the forest trees had sunk, and were dislodged from their roots. Then he noticed that he knew not where he was. _But no matter_ , he thought, _I remember my way back._  
And so he went, shredding dead branches with the palm of his hand, dancing through the thickening forest. Ash felt a scary tingling creeping up his back, but he, the toughest boy of all of Pallet was not afraid. Rain fell down as a light drizzle. Ash's face became wet as he advanced, the rain interfered with his vision, thankfully he was no longer on unsullied ground; the path ahead was cut clean and open.

The air darkened, the trees narrowed in on his clean-cut path. It felt no longer completely _safe._ Ash sprinted, the rain poured now, hurrying like Ash too.  
"Why did I go so deep into the forest," Ash cursed beneath his breath. He sped left, to a thickening, which he knew was a shortcut. Or hoped. The trees looked familiar, he thought, but everything he saw now, in the dark, was too alien. Was someone watching him? His back prickled. A thick vine lay in the midst of the path. It was too thick and heavy to lift, and it was dark and Ash saw it to late. He plummeted forward; silhouettes of the trees appeared to be slouching closer too him as he tumbled, yet again creating a maelstrom of dirt and mud. He paid it no attention, time and day was running out, and he had to get home before it got pitch-black. Vile Pokémon lurched these woods.

Then, tearing through a heather-bush dashed a four-legged Pokémon.

"Go away," Ash cried, his voice fading out. He was too scared. He clutched his arms around a root behind his head, and dragged himself as far away from the Pokémon as he could. He regretted going too deep into the forest. To play in surroundings unfit for a youngster like himself, 'why do you have to play with danger,' the words chimed in his ears: His mother's voice. 'Life is sacred, spend it well,' she had said too, a quote from his father.

Ash spun about, the smell of mildew and mud shot his nostrils, and he was facing downwards and inches from a growing puddle. The Pokémon hissed and screamed, and prowled closer with eager steps. _Click, clack._ The rain spat blobs of water; Ash spotted a log in the corner of his eyes and flung himself to it. But he was too late, the rabbit Pokémon Nidoran; a lavender-bluish coloured female, was clawing at his legs.

Then, as if air itself felt pain, Ash screamed into the ghost-shaded thickening.

Nidoran crashed its two front teeth into Ash's abdomen, and tore open his skin as though it was made of sand. Panic struck Ash's mind: Nidoran was a poison type, he thought whilst slashing his knuckles about. He had minutes to live if the Nidoran had poisoned him. He needed his knuckles to connect to something. _Life is sacred, spend it well_ … His knuckles bore into flesh, the Nidoran tumbled backwards and jolted, dazed, into the growing fog.

"Don't come back, or I'll give you more of a beating than that," he heard himself shout out.

Ash was on his knees when the second attack struck. The Nidoran hadn't retreated, nor forfeited. It collapsed into the small boy with a thunderous bang. Ash fell over to his sides, clutching his open wound, and slammed his head on a tussock. Up till now the pain had subsided, but now the adrenaline jetting in his blood stream had evaporated. Luckily for Ash his brain only registered one pain. The small boy focused, still laying on the tussock, on the growing headache. A headache he could manage to control, and overcome.

Minutes turned to seconds. The topside of an hourglass was soon out of sand. The winds gusted through the branches and his black hair. Fear, sweat – and probably blood – streamed from his head. He was too tired to move.

"If anyone can hear me please help me." He cried with the winds. At first he thought the air tasted like iron, but as time passed he knew it to be blood. _"So I am bleeding,"_ he coughed out. Nidoran was nowhere to be seen, the rustling in-between branches and deadwood had died out.  
"Where are you?" A voice came from somewhere inside the forest. "Ash, let us know where you are, please make a sound."

It was his mother voice, sounding distressed and tormented.  
"Ash," another voice shouted. This one belong to his grandfather, the great professor Oak.

"If anything happens to him – I," the agony in her voice was worse than the stings in his abdomen.  
"Calm down," said Professor Oak. "I won't allow it. You know that."  
"But it was I who told him he could play in the forest. It is all my fault."  
"You know he takes you to literal," Oak breathed; he was tired, Ash thought.

Rain was no longer an issue, his sight was drenched in other liquids, and he no longer felt any kind of pain. Ash felt relieved that the pain was gone. But fear struck him when he heard the weakening of their voices. He could no longer hear them clearly. Then, as he rolled over to his stomach, the pain shot through him once more. The Nidoran, hissing and screaming, had bolted out of a leaf covered, low hanging branch. It dug its bloodied teeth into Ash's thigh and wriggled his limb fiercely.

Again Ash felt too tired to scream, but he did anyways. "Mom, grandpa. I am here, I need help!" And hoped his last words would catch fire and flame his position. But it didn't, something else was burning. Ash, twisting around, kicked the now torched Nidoran with his free leg, and wrestled himself lose of its grip.

"Who's there?" he croaked, and saw, through blurred vision, a second ball of fire dashing left and right.

* * *

"Wait, I hear something." Said professor Oak. The giant butcher knife hacked its way through human sized leaves. Geranium phaeum: the star leaf. It had tiny veins almost, which the professor knew contained nutrients and antibiotics. _The leaves of life_ , it was named. But, as the butcher knife butchered and hacked a clear path forward, he cared not of its name. Nor of its value.

"What, where?" cried Delilah. Her eyes were wet; her nose was red and sore. She had been crying. Professor Oak knew she was hungry too and, as he cut off the nearest tree's arm, his own stomach growled. So was he.

"I think I heard a scream. To the east." He pointed left, and gestured. "Blastoise clear a path for us will you?"  
"Blast – Blastoise," said Blastoise, then vanished into his shell with a _swoop_ , and spun around so fast he was difficult to spot.

Leaves, branches and logs rocketed everywhere – and at great speed. "Venusaur, calm the trees and direct the projectiles elsewhere."

"Ven," said Venusaur lazily.  
"And try not damage more of the forest than we need to." The ground shook ferociously as though an earthquake was ripping the crust of the earth apart.

Delilah, professor Oak and Blastoise gunned their way through the thickening, which was forming whirlwinds off of Blastoise's shelled back. Blastoise jumped out of his shell and roared fiercely near a cluster of tree trunk. Professor Oak saw something darting through the tussocks with red-coated pelt.  
"My baby," Delilah cried out and lunged herself passed him with all her force, crashing down near a large brown root. Ash's lifeless body lying next to his sobbing daughter made his stomach twirl.  
"Is he alright?" asked professor Oak, digging inside his satchel for supplies. "You two," he barked to Blastoise and Venusaur, "set up a perimeter around us and try to capture the furry Pokémon who ran through there." He pointed to a tussock between two fallen trees, the bark on both of them was ripped clean. Almost surgically. _What's going on here,_ he thought as he grabbed bandages and a sowing kit from his satchel.

"Delilah," barked professor Oak again. "Go find me Geranium phaeum. The star leaf."

She did not listen, and refused to budge when Oak came crouched over Ash's body. "Look," he said cross, and shook her mildly. She was wasting precious time; professor Oak's military training was kicking in.

The old bearded man ripped his daughters arms of his barely breathing grandson, and ordered her to do as he said. She wiped her nose and eyes with a linen cloth and nodded, then dashed off into the haunted grass.

"Can you hear me?" he said, quieter now, speaking directly to Ash. "What happened to you?" Oak had sown the wound on his grandson's abdomen. Luckily it was a flesh wound, and hadn't punctured a lung or ripped apart a blood vessel.  
Ash's eye flickered. He tried to speak, but failed. The young child blurred out of consciousness, then regained it a couple of times; he had lost a lot of blood, but was stable. Delilah came charging back with the leaf of life, which professor Oak crushed and smeared on the linen. Professor Oak detected a Nidoran – burnt to a crisp – lying dead next to Ash as he recovered all of the medical supplies. Delilah, who was little to no help, was ordered to wash the blood off the medical supplies. She vanished soon after with a knife and a couple of clippers to a nearby stream for washing and scrubbing. The Nidoran's teeth were bloodied, and most of its skin was damaged. "We're in luck," said Oak inspecting the body, more to himself than to others. "Her teeth are too small, which means she's too young to develop and distribute poison."

The moon came lumbering forward on the open sky, and chased the fog and rain away. Ash's abdomen, head and thigh wounds were rinsed and protected with linen sunken in an herbalist dish; professor Oak's own recipe. Professor Oak calmed his daughter down as they strode lazily back home. "He will be A-Okay."

Ash lay silent and, seemingly, joyously in Blastoise scaled arms. Dreaming of cotton candy.

Professor Oak found time to sing a tune:

 _I need to breath to see the mountainside;  
I need the sight to see the shadow's path.  
When time grows old, we wither and die,  
then breath will in the end subside._

 _Life if for you to choose_

 _The choices you make will grant you ventures and riches_

 _A sheet covers the lonely mountain; and tall it is with lies_

 _Will we act when the haunted still live._

 _Or end it all in an ignorant bliss_

"Shh," Delilah said holding a finger cross her lips. She was searching her fathers face with a distraught grimace. "That song is illegal, it's the rebel song. And you know it. Ash is sick and hurt, and you go on about in the open forest singing illegal tunes, people have been hanged for blurting out those words by accident. Father," she breathed. "Please, I will not have you jeopardise my sons life any further."  
"I apologize," he said lifting up his glasses and rubbing his eyes, whilst shaking his dishevelled clothes. "I am an old man, now. I do not know what is what anymore, not as I used to anyways. Please forgive me, my dear daughter. It has been a long day, too long and too sorrowful.'

Delilah slithered her hand around her fathers arm and clutched it tightly. "Of course father. Ash is alright now, and it is all that-"  
A loud bang came from the west, and soon after Venusaur's drumming feet came pouncing out between two birch trees; its giant hind legs crushed their roots asunder. Professor Oak and Delilah stumbled a few feet back, but caught themselves before falling on their behinds.  
"What in the world is the meaning of this?" barked Oak, turning to his Pokémon wearyingly. When Venusaur – who seemingly acknowledging his mistake and quickly slowed his pace – came so near his master it looked as if the Pokémon was about to trample him, he boringly dumped a small, furry creature next to the old man's feet.  
"A Growlithe, how magnificent." Professor Oak said stunned. "It must be the one I saw darting off when we found Ash, and of course." It dawned on him in an _'it's so obvious'_ manner, "it was the bark I heard, the sound, he was the one who led us to Ash."

"Keep him, father, for Ash. They're meant to be together, I can feel it in my heart." Delilah said clutching her own chest.  
"I, too, can see a growing bond between these two. And we spoke of me training the boy earlier, right? Yes I will train him and his Growlithe, and when they are ready to venture off the illuminated path; and overcome trouble on their own, we shall not hinder them in stepping forth."  
"What say you," Professor Oak leaned closer to the frightened, red ball of fur. "Will you join us – and the boy you saved?" The Growlithe barked triumphantly. "Then let me catch you."

* * *

Ash woke up early in the morning. He flung the tunic over his head and knotted the laces, then he did the same with his trousers, and lastly attached the belt across his waist. There was no point in going down yet; his mother was still asleep.

Ash stood at the window and watched the red dawn explode on the early morning sky. Like a painting in rapid movements, colours jolting here and there, dodging dull cotton-like clouds. The dawn blossomed. The sun came shortly after, peaking over the mountains. The air cold, streaming down his lungs.

Ash pondered about what was beyond the forest on route 1. He could see that far, and farther still. "One day I'll go on an adventure," he promised himself. The grasp of wanderlust was almost too strong. Ash released Growlithe, who barked joyously and leapt up to the window frame. Ash petted his four legged companion – and saviour. The wound on his abdomen still hurt from time to time, but not enough, so he usually ignored it. Still he found himself clutching to it from time to time. For unknown reasons. It had been six month since the incident.

"What do you want to do today?" Ash asked his Pokémon, who just then, followed a swooping silhouette zooming about. A Pidgey came from the sea to the east. It flew low and close to the waves trashing into land. It zigzagged fallen boulders as it rushed towards green grass. It had nothing in its beak as far as Ash could see, and it looked as if it searched for a rock or tree to rest on. Build a nest maybe. It was too far out; the waves were crashing down on the boulders and fallen stubs. Pidgey coiled and twisted and dove in the air and shot down vertically into the blue open sea.

Ash looked at Growlithe. Growlithe glared at Ash. They were perplexed and bewildered. The bird was gone for a minute, maybe more. Then it came out with a chirp and glistening droplets of water. It looked cold, Ash thought, as he saw a trail of rain behind it. Ash grabbed his boots and leather gauntlets and gunned for the door. There wasn't much else outside the window frame. And he was going to work with professor Oak on guarding the walls.

The stairway was dark. Ash squinted into the shadows looking for the outline of the next step. Growlithe cared not and ended up flat on his belly skidding down. Ash laughed as the four-legged Pokémon, angrily, barked at the last step.

Ash and Growlithe went over the threshold and out into the cold autumn morning. They jogged to the pier and back. At first when Oak had ordered them to run ones a day Ash had hated it. But with Growlithe at his side it became a competition. Which he liked, but always lost.

Ash stepped over the threshold again and headed to the kitchen. Growlithe, who wasn't allowed on the dinner table – or chairs, sat on a chair (ignoring Delilah's warnings) eating from his bowl of crushed meats and fruits. Ash grabbed a pear from the counter and put the pot on the stove. Growlithe jumped off his chair when it rustled upstairs. "Good boy," said Ash smirking. There was screeching, which meant that the water was boiling. Ash opened the cabinet doors. Took out two coffee cups, dumped coffee powder in both, and filled them with water. The black powder and clear water mixed creating a maelstrom of bubbling black brew.

Delilah came down the stairs. She was moving fast. There was a murmur in the air. Something was up with her.  
"Good morning," she said dancing in and out of the kitchen door. She must have seen Ash's expression. "Farmers market," she giggled. "I promised Mrs French I would join her today, you know, to keep her spirits up."  
Ash remembered the French family well. The husband: Derek French got drafted into the royal army a while back and was supposed to have returned not too long ago. But he hadn't. And they were given no solace, and no answer.

"How is she?"  
"She a little off and on. Mostly off, really. The poor woman," Delilah shook her head as though there was no hope. "And not even a body to burry."

"So he died?" Asked Ash. Death in the outskirts weren't uncommon.

"We cannot know for sure, of course. And thank heavens for that. But when they're keeping his whereabouts so close to chest something's not right. And my best guess would be dead, yes."  
"But enough about that," she said feigning a smile. "What are you up to today? Already been out jogging I see." She nodded to the muddy boots on the porch.  
"Professor Oak's teaching me about the wall and guard duty. You okay with that?" Ash asked.  
"With you guarding the Pallet town walls?"  
Ash nodded restraining his neck. If she weren't on-board it would never happen. Delilah had too much power over her father and him.  
"I don't like it," she said with a calm voice as the outer doors swayed in the lazy air. A chilling breeze swooped inside. Growlithe barked at the invisible foe. It was gone as quick as it had come. "But you're growing older and I cannot protect you against your own wanderlust anymore. So guard duty will be an important first step to understanding danger. And maybe you'll learn to be a bit more careful."  
"And," Delilah arched over Growlithe and scratched him enthusiastically under his chin. "Growlithe is growing bigger and bigger by the day, soon he'll evolve. A strong bond you two have, Ash. That's why we kept him after the… incident. He was there for you, protected you." A tear formed in her eyes, which she wiped off. They hadn't talked about the incident much. She often tried to hide the agony, but Ash saw the blank stare when the topic came up.  
"I know mom, go have fun at the markets, see you for dinner?"  
"I will. And if grandpa keeps you – send me a message will you? Grandpa has some spare Spearows he's training as a delivery service. Ludacris I know."

The doors closed and Ash heard his mother's laughter singing through the window cracks. "Yes," he blurred out when she was on the road to Pallet Square. His fuel pumps were working double-time. Growlithe danced around him, then barked eagerly at the door.

"Hang on," Ash said. "Coffee first."

Ash recalled Growlithe and put the pokeball in its holster on his hip. He ran upstairs and collected another pokeball – this one empty, dashed downstairs, crossed the threshold of his front door, locked the door with a key and darted off to the largest building in town. Professor Oak's laboratory.

Most of the houses he passed were glorified tents or canvases. Some of it made up by sheets, some of it by wood. There were red barns overlooking the hillside. Each one fenced in by barbwire. The outskirts – far away from militia or the army's protection – often led to gruesome deaths if one did not protect one self. A flock of Spearow's swoop and whirled and charged one another, heading into the meadows. Ash figured there was a waterhole there somewhere.

Ash nodded to a pair of white coats who strode up the road to the laboratory. The building was square with tons of windows. Two cupcake shaped towers swirled on each side of the masonry structure. The white coats nodded back. He followed the back of their heads up the stairs to the front doors. He took the last step of the twenty-three-flight staircase and breathed out; he knew the numbers too damned well. _"Quicker now," he heard professor Oak shout at him. The night was dressed in black and he was sweating as if a rain cloud drizzled just on him. "Up and down the stairs you go, nay run young lad."_ It ached in his thighs just thinking about it.

A young man named John came to where Ash was leaning on the railing. Not because he was tired, but because the sun peeked out between two heavy clouds and he felt like absorbing the beams of warmth.  
"Hi Ash," said John waving his hands about. He was wearing a white lab coat – as most did in Oak's lab – and held a clipboard out to Ash. The young Ash, enjoying a dash of sunlight, took it. "Professor Oak is on route one. He said it was urgent, and told me to tell you that he'd be back some time soon."  
"Did he say when exactly?"  
"No."  
"Do you know where he is?"  
"He said he wanted to check out the soil levels in the deep ends of the forest, southeast of Viridian City. Venusaur and Blastoise are with him so you don't have to worry about him."  
Ash nodded, "I'm not. If anyone can fight whatever looms in the deep ends it's grandpa."  
Ash addressed the clipboard second, which had lots of names and dates written on it. "What is it?"  
"Guard duty," the lab assistant said as he, too, enjoyed a bit of the jolting sun. "You're on watch with Sir Devon tonight. Don't worry," John interrupted as he saw Ash's horrid grimace, "the rumours aren't true, and he's a good bloke. And an outstanding guardsman."

Ash nodded breathing out. The young – soon to be – trainer, (if he'd have it his way), didn't know where the rumours circulating Sir Devon (circling like a flock of Fearows' waiting for him to die so they could feast) came from. Perhaps a young guardsman who got scared on the job; perhaps Sir Devon, with his gritty personality, rubbed a fellow guardsman the wrong way. Ash wasn't sure, but he trusted John, and laid the rumours to rest.

Ash left John on the top of the staircase and lumbered into the shade and headed to the Inn. Ash released Growlithe. They waved at passing villagers and kicked pebbles as the jolting sun sped from east to west. Growlithe chased the pebbles through the farmers-market crowd; zigzagging and swaying and whirling, then as some innocent villager stepped on the small rock he barked loud and furiously.  
"Stop it, bad Growlithe," hissed Ash and apologized to the bewildered woman. Growlithe on the other hand cared not about what he had done – he was simply pleased when the pebble was free from her grasp and locked-in it between his upper and lower jaw.

The autumn leaves were all the way here and the air grew colder as the days grew darker. The soothing and restful quality of the green grass was gone. Replacing it was grey, dull clouds; brown decaying leaves; naked trees, and ominous foretelling's.

A girl came out of the Inn. She was wearing plaid chest armour and chainmail under it. Her pants were of leather and pitch-black of colour. A sword was sheathed on her back. The pummel on her sword was a figuring shaped as a five-legged Staryu. Ash thought for a moment that the Staryu figurine was made of real gold, but it would be foolish to enter the wilds with such value on her back. She looked resigned, and drowsy, and fidgety. Like a soldier going to war.

"Excuse me," she said and gave Growlithe a smile and Ash a nod. "He's really cute."

"Thank you," said Ash. Growlithe barked and playfully scratched at her legs.

Ash hadn't seen her around before. She had an unforgettable quality, too. She pulled her hair back with a rubber band. "I've never seen one so up close before," some men were calling for her atop a caravan. She waved back to them. "Well I'm off, see you around," she tracked round Ash to Growlithe, her boots clicking as she walked and said. «And don't order the split pea sup, doesn't sit right.» Then clutched her stomach. Ash raised his eyebrows. Smiled at her and tapped his own stomach with his flat hand and made a winding motion.

She narrowed her eyebrows slightly, tilted her head and smirked. "You're funny," she said. A gust of wind lolled, passing them and cutting through the alleyways. It made a hollow _swoosh_ sound as though it was not of this world. A rift in this world perhaps. The men near the caravan yelled now "Damn," she said and shouted back to them. "I really have to going now."

"Where are you going?" Ash asked, politely.

"I'm helping out merchants and traders. A chauffeur, or guide if you will."

"Well their in luck," Ash chuckled leaning against the door, his arms crisscrossed in front of him. He was trying to impress her. But why? He found no answer. Growlithe's round balls of eyes bounced back and forth from Ash to the sword girl, apprehensively.  
"How so?" she asked with a bewildered grimace. «They have a well-armed chauffeur.»

Ash and Growlithe swayed the barn door open, entered, and closed it behind them. The Inn was large, but empty. There were two paintings on the wall and a fireplace near some stairs. The stairs led up to a couple of guest rooms. Ash had never seen one, but guessed they were small and undecorated. So was the Inn, if you didn't count the painting. Which Ash didn't. One was all white, even the frame. And on the bottom it read 'An Eevee in a snow cave in winter'. Ash laughed. It was kind of funny.

Red linings, dark blue cliffs and yellow rivers gushed out of the second painting. It was abstract art his mother had said. Ash figured abstract meant nonsense in art language. Why else would a river be yellow and flow above the cliffs in the shaded sky. It made no sense to him. Gods piss steaming rivers.

"Shit!" A man sitting near the fireplace said, speaking to another man. They wore black and grey leather armour; the one closest to the fireplace had a small dagger and two pokeballs strapped to his hip. The other man wore a thin silk cloak that covered him. Ash saw neither his face, nor weapons.

"I know Clint…" The barkeep scurried over with two hot plates of stew and two glasses of ale. He lingered for a tip, but darted off when he saw their annoyed looks. They waited until he was out of earshot.

"This dump will do for tonight, but tomorrow we're leaving, the boss got some work cut out for us."  
"And the old man?" Asked Roger.  
… Clint forcefully snapped Roger's arms, which was half way down his bowl. "Shut the – up. It's taken care of. Focus on your own job and you'll be fine, okay?" Roger massaged the palm of his hand with the other; Clint's squishing it had clearly hurt. Ash looked away; the one named Roger was looking his way. Ash thought, at least. The air froze.

The barkeep, Terra, lit up as a dried ilex in luminous woodlands when he saw Ash. "Who's that?" Ash asked.  
"Some blokes off the beaten path. Hired guns would be my guessing. The traders don't dare venture to these lands unguarded anymore. It's too treacherous they say."  
 _The girl with the sword,_ Ash thought. _She must've been one of the traders' guards._

"Pokémon, are they attacking?"  
"That too, but it's not the stories I hear. They fend of the Pokémon on the beaten path – most of them have their own you see. Some even two or three, though it's rare." Terra snatched a bottle of ale and jerked his head so far back that for a second Ash thought it would snap off. The contents of the bottle disappeared down the waterfall.

"They say," he hiccupped, "that there are major parts of the soil that have imploded and gone. And – don't interrupt me boy. There are dying trees and lack of food. Pokémon no longer venture to the deep ends where they often habituated before. And where do they go you ask?"  
Terra was drunk, and it took Ash a minute before he understood that Terra wanted Ash to answer.  
"I don't know." Said Ash, vexed.

"On the pathway of course, you dumb boy." He took another sip and refilled the bottle from the tap. Terra was an old Pokémon trainer – a good one too; who settled down in Pallet town and met Melissa. A maiden. They were happy for lengths upon lengths. Then she caught the _plague_ ; and when the black boils of death boiled her skin there was nothing to be done.

Terra wasn't the same after that. He took to brews, and neglected his Pokémon.

 _So that's what grandpa's up to._ Thought Ash. The two men had stopped talking and focused all their attention on the stew. A little later, when the sun had reached the pinnacle on the blue sky, Terra came with Ash's stew and a bowl of meats for Growlithe.  
"Grow – Growlithe," said the red beast, and then dug its snout into the bowl; he growled like a hum and pulled back his lips, exposing a sharp set of teeth.

* * *

Professor Oak took a bite of his Sandshrew sandwich. A single Pidgeotto was swooping and shooting low under the canopy of the trees. The ilexes stood tall and royal; they were thin and had tentacle roots bound together in the dirt, they were branchless and naked all the way up to the top, where leaves and wood spread out and covered the sun like a massive umbrella.

He had taken over a dozen samples from various barks: Oak, and birch, and deadwood. And was ready to make the walkway home when a distinctive boot sound marched with the slow breeze.

Ten men came out of the crossing. They were armed with spears and daggers and swords; some of the men threw their pokeballs to the ground; and materializing from the white light came Zubat's and Golbat's coated in lavender fur. There were two Bedrill's; their eyes were glistening like a thousand sparkled stars. One trainer had a Poliwrath, which the professor – even under these conditions – found fascinating.

"Come with us," said a man walking forward, as though they knew each other. The leader Oak presumed. He stepped warily closer and when they were twenty inches apart he tossed a set of handcuffs at professor Oak. Oak was four bites from completing his sandwich and wasn't in the mood to be bullied by a flock of mindless thugs.  
"Don't even try it," said the man in response to Oaks' hands reaching down his lab coat. "If you reach for a pokeball we will kill them, skin them, and force feed you their meat.

Oak smiled eerily and took his empty hands out of the pockets. "I'm an old man with old habits," he said. "They aren't as easy to shake as one might think. But if I might ask: what are your intentions? Why me? And how did you find me?"

"Friends," the same man said, in a polite manner. He was the only one of them who looked to have over sixty IQ. No surprise he was the one doing the talking, still, as old as he was, Oak wasn't frightened.

The wind gusted and blew, swayed and stung. Oak snapped one of the cuffs on one hand and the other cuff on the other hand.

* * *

Ash and Growlithe were panting through the tall grass. They had decided to try and catch another companion, and headed northeast of the village. The road – called route one – was a few kilometres to their left and west. Ash debated whether he was wetter on his back or his feet. The terrain, which started out firm and solid with grass and tussocks spurring wildly, had turned swamp-like the further east they went.

"The deep ends," Ash breathed. "They've really changed."  
Growlithe barked in acknowledgement, his paws were soaking and brown. The earth and bogs had bubbling patches of water, which Ash and Growlithe tracked round. A smell of mould and rotten cheese oozed from the bursting bubbles. As they stalked further it became excruciatingly difficult to keep the stew in.

Growlithe seemed unaffected by the smell and prowled and breathed glistening shards of fire on the thickening deadwood; the deadwood flickered and snapped and popped as if it were corns heating on an unbelievably hot summer day. Then it turned to ash and ploughed down stream. Ash took a single step forward; a black mass formed on the surface and exploded on his boots. Ash staggered backwards desperately trying to cling onto a long straw or some overgrown buckleweed. But there was none and he fell crashing down onto an oversized tussock. His feet stank a mixture of rotten corpse meet raw fish.

He hurled.

Growlithe bowed his snout low in the bog lands. Hot steam of white air visibly flowed out of him. His nose twitched and his teeth were exposed.  
"What's up boy?" Said Ash out of breath, and sweating from his forehead.  
A Pidgey, cleaning its feathers, raised its beak. "Oh, a Pidgey. But it's all alone, doesn't they usually fly in flock?" Growlithe said nothing. "Let's catch it." The furred fireball tracked round a puddle of boiling bog water, growling fiercely at the nonchalant Pidgey. Quickly Ash darted the other way, cutting off its path. "If it tries to fly jolt a ball of ember above its head."

Pidgey squawked, flapping its wings as though it was warning its foes not to move a single step closer. "Now," shouted Ash. Growlithe hastily rounded the tangled coppice. Embers crackled from his open yaw, which whacked the birds' flapping wings; Pidgey was flailing about indignantly, collapsed and squeaked. "Enough Growlithe, I think it's dazed now." The orange Pokémon paused with a paw in a puddle and a ball of crackling fire forming in his mouth. Ash tossed the red and white pokeball. The silhouette of a flailing, panicky Pidgey vanished into the ball. Which wobbled about on a tilted birch.

Growlithe sniffed the pokeball first, then Ash came walking over and lifted up. "I cannot believe we've caught over first Pokémon." Growlithe turned his head and growled, displeased. "You don't count, I never caught you," Ash, with a gentle tone, said, scratching his red coated friend behind the air. "But of course you're my first Pokémon. And brilliant you were too!"

The pokeball bounced and opened, then flung back to Ash's arm like a boomerang. He latched the now empty pokeball in the pouch on his hip and watched – together with Growlithe – as the avian Pidgey materialized; its flight feathers where white as milk as they stretched. They were of paragon quality. Its beak was short and stout, which glimmered sharply as the sun was setting in the west. The Ardung Mountains shaded most of the sea to the west, but Ash's countenance was set on his new Pokémon. Pidgey yawned a safe distance away, then, as the ominous shadows trailed their way closer to them, it fluttered and manifested a crest on its head of three tufts.

"Oh, crap. We've been out here for too long. We have guard duty, and mom's probably sick of worry." The bewildered Pidgey returned to the pokeball with in a white light. Growlithe refused to and, as it was Growlithe who could find the way back with a sniffing nose, Ash counted his lucky stars.

The canine often paused, sniffing the air. Then he would chatter indicating some predatory excitement a distance further off. Ash darted faster through the ravines, avoiding as much of the cracking deadwood under his feet; drumming their way to safety was not an option. He wanted to unleash Pidgey and have it spot the outskirt town or a hard surface; his boots made a _slosh_ sound as the soggy ground beneath him gave in. But doing so would surely mean it would bail on its distraught master and soar to its friends. Ash sped up; the thought of ten to twenty birds of prey swooping at them scared him. Scarce were his weapons too.

* * *

The suns glare over the canopy of trees died away. Then it shot rays of red light over the Ardung Mountains, and then the twilight darkened. The aurora borealis slithered onto the glittering night sky; the trees had no leaves now, they were naked with frosted tips. One of the captors glared at the dancing green light.  
"You know," said professor Oak. "In old folk tails they often say that those who linger their sight on the northern lights will be chased and found, and then be possessed. And when that person have done unspeakable acts against mankind and Pokémonkind will it release you to death."  
"You threatening me?" Asked the guard rhetorically, and jabbed the professor with his elbow. Handcuffed the professor leaned over, breathing rapidly. "A – warning, that – " The blow to his gut knocked all the air out of him. He was old, and his veins were not as strong as they were when he was of youth. He would be blue all over in a matter of minutes.

Professor Oak trudging on the beaten path. When the man behind him – he was cloaked and wore a mask over his mouth and nose; professor Oak couldn't identify him – felt that the professor was walking slowly he often nudged the old man's shoulder. It hadn't, and wouldn't, do much. He was old, and old people, in deep puddles, trudged.

The professor went as far as he could, then bowed his head; his aching knees vibrated and shivered. He fell sideways, tangling the handcuffs in his white lab coat, ripping a part off. He quickly forced the piece of wholly fabric under a string of coppices. Lying there he waited for the broad-shouldered man to lift him back to his twiddling feet, hoping someone would find it.

Out of sight, but within earshot Pokémon darted north and south, east and west. Sometimes the professor heard faint screams and chewing noises. Sometimes the moon would gleam its dull rays on a puddle, which sparked and brightened the colourless lands. He lived for those moments, he thought. When nature's prowess displayed enchanting sights for sore eyes.

They came to a crossroads, which had poles lit by flickering flames, which led the way down a steep hillside, near a dried up ravine. The trees resting there had stayed too long and died of drought. Water became scarcer and scarcer, the professor noted. The black roots lay solid stretching from the tree trunks, but when touched they became porous and turned to ash.

 _When did it last rain?_ He asked himself _._ And remembered nought.

"We camp here," muffled the leader through a red mask. "The town is a few leagues from here. Set up a perimeter, all those with Pokémon track south where the deep ends lay." Half the men scurried off.  
"And what about me," said professor Oak, humorously. "You've taken my Pokémon, shall I guard the north passage perhaps?"  
The red masked leader sauntered to Oaks' location. He was smiling with his eyes. "Watch it old man. We might've gotten orders to distribute you alive, but not necessarily unscratched."  
"So your intent is to hand me to someone, mercenary," said Oak. "I had my guesses, sure, but glad they've been confirmed."

Waves, big and violent, danced on the leaders forehead. His eyes had narrowed; his eyebrows became one.  
"Don't test me old man. I do care about money, but I've been too tempted by foul tongued prisoners before – it's not all about the money." Then suddenly, with a wisp of his arm, a dagger jolted out of his pocket, unsheathed, resting on the professor's throat.

"What did you say?" He asked. The knife dug into the professor's Adams apple.  
Professor Oak said nothing.  
"Thought so. Fill that pipe hole with some grub. I saw a half eaten sandwich there earlier. When I grabbed your pokeballs."

Water flowed bland down the riverbank. The surface steamed. It vaporized into the hollow air like ghost dancing and twisting in torment. Autumn's glow was adjusting to the winter's blue carpet, and winter sent chilling breezes down the eastward bank. Soon come the drizzling snow; soon would the naked trees shade under white sheets and sparkling glimmers of the sun. The sun was drowsy and weak; it hid more often behind the wistful mountains.

"Hang back," muttered the leader to the others. "Someone's ahead. Wait here, out of sight." The leader gestured for two of his men to follow. The rest, including professor Oak, who was shunned off behind a buckleweed bush, hid in the darkness. The luminous flames flickered to no man.  
They came back some time later. The professor was growing weary and fatigued. He knew they needed him alive. The three men had doubled and were now six. The professor passed them no sight; for he was too tired to care.

"He's over there," said the familiar voice of the leader, and in the same moment someone lunged him to his feet, forcefully.  
"Stop it now," said a female voice. She was masked too, and the smallest of the six. "He's not a weakling farmer or a sold maiden. He's to be treated well, and to be taken good care of. I see you have failed there." She eyed him in an inspecting manner, as though he was a Pokémon in a beauty competition.

The masked female snapped her fingers. The man with the keys to the handcuffs came forth and unhinged the old professor; Oak rubbed his wrists. They were red and blistered. She snapped her fingers again and two men came to a halt on either side of him. The old man spotted nothing off of them, not a tattoo or a smell, as he was guided round the ploughed patches in the tall grass.

The woman apologized and headed in front, onwards they marched. She had two Pokémon, a Vileplume and Venonat, on her flanks and a Venomoth swooping over the rigid treetops. "Who are you? And what do you want?" said Oak, bewildered. The wind still blew from north to southwest; carrying chilling breezes and frosted tips. The land beneath them was still soggy and bog-like; steaming bubbles of vile dark liquids popped as they, seemingly aimlessly, roamed the gravelled hillside.  
"I demand to know who, and what my captors are up to!" The old professor cried. At first the echo shot of into the gloom. Then it died some leagues away as a hollowing whisper.

She had a cloak to stealth her hair and head. She wore a lustreless lavender coloured mask hiding her cheekbones, mouth and nose. Her eyes, shimmering in the gloaming light, were purple.  
"You'll find out soon," she said. Then suddenly, as if a merriment force had awaken, and the birds chirruped it on, the morning broke lose from the tip of the mountains. Professor Oak sighted, he had walked and stumbled through the marchland and the deep ends for longer than he wished. The red dawn mirrored his wrists.

They went quickly through the open gates of Viridian city, stopping only to stamp the papers they had. Professor Oak dared not think of what was written on them. He was a prisoner to all who could see. Busy streets and marble erected buildings, shooting high up into the sky, met the prisoner convoy as they ventured deeper into the blossoming city. Basket with flowers hung from ropes and hooks near windowless frames. Joy was rummaging through the tidy streets; neighbour chattering drummed from one side to the other, darting, like the wind, through freckled girls prancing and zigzagging up the streets.

He stumbled and almost fell on the marble tiles leading down the main street. The houses were coated well for winter with thatched roofs and gilded doors; the brisk air was now engulfed in soft and sweet scents of pie and coffee and baked bread.

"In you go and up you go." Said the poison-eyed woman. Her Pokémon had vanished inside their pokeballs.  
"Are you one of them?" Asked professor Oak, curiously. There were rumours fluttering of those who connected deeply to specific types. Oak taught it rubbish – altering ones DNA seemed preposterous – then he saw her. "If my sight is cheating me –"  
"It is not old man," she said, smirking with her eyes. "We'll stand guard outside if you need anything. And don't forget that you're a prisoner. We don't forget, we don't forgive."

Oak limped up a flight of stairs and crashed, head first, on the pillow.

* * *

Hi, again This is it for my first chapter. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. As many of you – who read the whole chapter – can most-likely tell: I'm not English. Thus, to me, it's a foreign language. Still I apologize again for misspellings and such. I will continue with chapter 2. And hope most, if not all, will continue to read the story. Thank you.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Delilah, stooping through the kitchen pantry like a four-legged Pokémon, was furious. Ragnhild French, the maybe-widow, sat by the table in a humorous mood. On her third attempt, in the back of the pantry, Delilah snatched a small teapot.

"Bugger you Ash," she whispered with gritted teeth, so that her words would fall on deaf ears.  
"Found it, finally."

She turned her head and dashed up with such speed and force her head smacked right in the bowl of their copper sink. Then she wobbled her way to the bucket of water.

Ragnhild French gasped and held a hand in front of her mouth.

"Are you okay?" she asked. Delilah cared not; it was not her first bump, and wouldn't be the last.

"Yes of course, and don't even for a second think that I cannot see the malevolent snickering behind your hand," said Delilah, playfully. The sun was setting in the west. A shimmering beam flashed through the windows, bounced off the copper sink, glittered like stars in the fresh well water, and gleamed at the golden gloom Ragnhild wore on her fourth finger. The shimmering vapour from the boiling pot rose like knights in an overwhelming battle, death was inevitable – they stopped chuckling.

Shade and darkness knew when the ominous tides were washing in. They were there the instant laughter died. The shadow twirled as ghosts down the ceiling, passing white window frames and slaying them as it ventured. The ghosts devoured the cupboard as if it was a sunken gulf of soil and the shades were ferocious tsunamis.

Ragnhild French, twirling the ring on her finger, was transfixed at a sight in the river valley hundred leagues away. "I shouldn't wear it," she said. Then suddenly, as the sun's rays gave off their last red jolts of light, and the sunken bubbles in the teapot rose to the surface, the pot fizzed an ear-deafening screech. "What courage did you muster when you took it off, Delilah?" The question hung in the windless air for several minutes.

A tear formed in the corner of Ragnhild's eye. "I still search, with my wet eyes, far into the mountains. The mist," she cried and buried her face in her hands, "it's thickening. I cannot see him coming in, coming home. I hear him call to me, too, at the edge of the cliff overseeing the thrashing waters. He says to come meet him there; he's out there, I know it, I can _feel_ it."

Delilah spurred hastily; the conversation – and more importantly the _decisions_ were forming in her friend's darkened mind. Delilah clutched the tea towel from the handlebar, sat the boiling tea-water on the tea towel on the dining table, fetched two cups from the eclipsed cupboard, and flumped onto her own chair.  
"No answer is given in death, my dear." Delilah said warily and filled their cups. A little seed plopped, then dug through the surface. On its twiddling way down to the white bottom the seed burst open. Lavender and azure coloured leaves sprouted out and attacked the invisible water; the dim colourless water erupted and shook.

"How beautiful," Ragnhild choked. As if sun itself felt her perils it shot a last beaming and luminous light into the kitchen. Which burst and fought the shadows away.

"May it be…" whispered Delilah.  
"What?" Asked Ragnhild.  
"Nothing, I'm just glad there's light back in my house."  
"Me too."

"You know what?" Asked Ragnhild after a while. She put the cup on her lower lip, and leaned her head back so far it looked as though she was drinking it all in one gulp.  
"No," said Delilah with narrowed eyebrows and flickering eyes.  
"I think we've experienced too much hardship for one soul to carry."  
"Do you?"  
"Yes," Ragnhild said, almost laughing. "But we have each other."

Delilah finished her cup of tea. _I wonder where Ash is. He and grandpa don't have a freaking sense of time. I should give them both an Hourglass._

SC

The man in the room next to his, a slumped window separating them, grunted. Professor Oak took it as a sign he wanted to hear more. Ranting, even under captivity, was one of the professor's finest hobbies.  
"The Rebels brought as many as two thousand men to the battle of the Broken Skull valley; and it was in fact named so after the battle. One could not walk or turn or twaddle; skulls were crushing wherever you stepped." Professor Oak pretended not to register the contempt in the man voice as he told the professor to shut his pipe hole.

"That reminds me," said the professor, and lit his pipe. The tobacco crackled as if it was a fireplace with needle branches as firewood.

"Where was I? Ah, of course. The battle of Broken Skull valley lasted for days, some even claim weeks. The King, his highness Ragaar, sent half of his entire army to crush the Rebels once and for all. He, on the other hand, was eating cake by the coast line of route twelve." Oak spat out.

Then he kept on:

"The Rebels had two gym leaders on their side; Gallan of Pewter city and Rose of Saffron city. The Rebels fought valiantly, and had unmatched archers amongst their ranks; however, as the King and his court new very well, they had near no Pokémon trainers in their midst. The royal army had two hundred fighting Pokémon trainers with a staggering five hundred Pokémon at their side." Oak spat a tobacco leaf which had travelled through the shaft, and landed on the tip of the professor's tongue.

"Rose was magnificent I heard: her six Pokémon defended the eastern flanks valiantly, saving two hundred men, and wrecked havoc on the kings royal air troops," he sighted and lowered his head in the darkness of his cell. "A spear through the back of her neck; and as she mended her battered Pokémon, is not an accepting departure from this world. Having it done by her own, corrupted second in command is unspeakable." A glooming breeze of shadow came over him, the crackling pipe, set ablaze by the professor's inbreathing, was all the owl light he had in the dusk prison-room.

"I heard it was an arrow to the chest but the enemy," said the grumpy sailor in the cell next to the professor.

"I wish. For it would have been better."

The professor spoke while gazing into the brick walls, his tale, as the night went on, fainted out.

He ached and rubbed his legs, then massaged his wrists. His sight could see silhouettes of the edges of his cell. The bandits – who had taken him from the other bandits – had collected him, quite forcefully, in the midst of twilight. A staggering and breath-taking lightshow it had been when they bound him, again.

But as he was being dragged, scraping his knees on the marble stones through the empty streets at twilight, he hadn't found it mesmerizing.

Hours went by, he knew not if morning rose or set; nor if it had even come to pass on the sky. The air smelled familiar, too familiar. There were stirrings up and about, the bandits weren't common thugs, nor were they unfamiliar. He knew of them, belonged to them a while back too. The rebel cause: Oh yes, he had believed in the _cause_. But why had they hired those criminals? Those lazy coin-seeking thugs, Oak cursed in his mind. And why was there a whiff of something wrong in the air?

It _clicked_ in a lock, and the rustling of squealing hinges snapped his mouth shut. A wisp of smoke rose as the professor raised his head, and then staggered on his feet. A shade dressed in black, stalking with mail boots crushing against the floor, opened up a new set of locks. These hinges did, too, squeal as they were dragged open by a set of iron gauntlets.

"What is going on?" Asked professor Oak. The brute of a man did not move, nor did he speak. The man reached for the professor's coat, urgently whipping him forward and out of the cell chambers. As he came was being commandeered into the next room he smelled a sweet perfume. The lavender-eyed woman – wearing no mask now – smiled at him. Beautiful, and young, she was. The sunrise ghosted from the window glass; professor Oak squinted as the sunrays glared at him.

"You probably know by now who we are," she said, rhetorically.  
"The Rebels," Professor Oak answered, nonchalant.

"Yes, and we do apologize for the way we've treated you, but we had to make it look like a kidnapping – that's why we hired common thugs, so that the royals…" she spat, "wouldn't form troops and jeopardize your, and our, safety even further." A young girl came into the morning lit room and handed Oak his satchel and pokeballs. The room was a kitchen of sorts. It had pots and pans, a stove and cutlery. The dressing on the wall was blue behind thick layers of grey dust and most of the utensils looked to be unused.

"But why have you kidnapped me. I am, as you all know, a friend to the Rebels."  
"Indeed," she blurted. "There's a bounty on your head, recently organized by high up in the court, and we – as you are a friend to us – came to save you."  
Indignant to what he was being told, and rubbing his aching and blistering wrists, Oak said in a sarcastic manner: "Thank you."

"Do not think us evil, our ways have changed, yes. We are more secretive and untrusting than we were. But we are still strong in the cause, still longing for the day of freedom. You understand, right?" she spoke the words as though she believed them. With blazing fire.

A buzzing chill came over them. The shadows were cowering in the edges of the room. Professor Oak dumped his bottom on a chair. Wisps of dust soared out from under the searing force.

"I do not, but why drag me from my home and my family for a threat. I can defend myself."  
"We owe you."  
"And?"

"What?" she said genuinely startled.

"What of this threat?" He asked, irked.

"It's the Gyarados; it's him…" she shivered as though the one whom she spoke of was the devil himself. She trailed on reluctantly. "Vexil is the one after you. Vexil has taken a hundred infantry soldiers and a dozen trainers to your shores. He is there as we speak. We thought-"

The chair smashed into the south wall, loosening thousands of particles into the air. They coughed all together; and breathed in crushed balls of grey.

"And you kidnap me! Are you out of your minds!" Oak was half way out the door shouting, plodding his way onwards. "My family, Ash and Delilah, and our entire village is in danger because of you."  
"But we thought," she pled, as though for her own life. "You – and the village – would be safe if they found you nought. If you were kidnapped they would leave and search elsewhere."  
Oak grimaced dumbfounded. "This is Vexil we're talking about. A ruthless and deadly man. He does not care for casualties. Nor if they are children, men or women."

"But," she uttered.

"But nothing," Oak said with watery eyes. The hinges squeaking as he ripped the door open. The morning sun blinded him with its jolting rays. He staggered back into the shadows caress. "I should have been there, forfeited myself willingly to him and his men. In exchange he would've let the villagers go, let the village stay as it was. What interest would he have killing and slaughtering, losing troops of his own, fuelling the rebel cause, if I was there…"

The young girl, the one who fetched his things raised her head. Professor Oak interrupted her before she could speak.

"…You are ignorant," he spat at them. "Now fetch me a flying Pokémon or I will decapitate you all with my Blastoise."

SC

Ash and Growlithe were limping through the heavy grass, and saw in the distance a bay and a boat. A fishing boat it was for it had fifty or more circling Wingulls above. They went on – the burden on their Bodies weighing them down – and halted at a crossing. Ash filled his bottle from a nearby streaming river. A hillside to the south was blackened by the leeching night. Pine trees and bushes with needles sharp as daggers slept wearily on the hillside. Ash was not about to venture into the thickening of forest; not while he was lost, again, in the deep ends.

A branch snapped and split and bounced into the night.

Ash twisted his head left and right, north and south. His eyes lingered on a shimmering. It glistened back at him; glaring with eyes red in the centre and milky white engulfed around. A riverbank lay to their east. It was dead silent.

Ash breathed out. "You scared me half to death boy."

"Grow," it came out as a muffled bark. When Growlithe came to sight, jaws open, he bore a dead Ratatta, his fangs deep in its flesh.

«Grow,» he barked proudly, and flung the rodent at Ash's feet. With a sour distaste in his mouth Ash whispered. "Go nuts boy, it's all yours." The eerie night was hastily blanketing the stars above them. Ash thought about his mom, and how angry she would be about now. He thought of his grandfather, hoping he was there, beside her, as they came up with a game plan. He had wandered too deep again. Yet he was not in solitude now. With Growlithe and the newly caught Pidgey he felt the silk touch of safety. At least a little.

Ash knew not where they were, and Growlithe, pouncing happily with the rodent's bone in-between his jaws, _cared_ not where they were. He was too pleased to care, and too proud to sniff the air. Growlithe was large now too. When Ash got him six months ago the canine was knee sized on Ash. Now he was closer to his hip. His hind legs and front legs had grown too, the muscles had even doubled, and Ash wondered if an evolution was to come. But pushing him to the brink was unacceptable.

At a crossing they could go no further without a breather. To the north the sky twirled in blackness. Ash gleamed at a chasm and walked to the edge of it. He looked down into the abyss, but saw nothing. A pitch-black wall of nothing soared from the tip of the abyss to the edge of the sky. No glistening stars dazzled his eyes on the empty canvas above, no trees to outline in the depths below. Shadow was closing in. Shadow had come.

Growlithe, no longer chewing the bone, barked and sniffed the windless air. He tracked round a needle bush and dug his snout down on a beaten path. It was hidden very well. They trailed on the edge of the chasm a long way, then a valley of stone soared on each side of them, and down a steep hill their feet recoiled. The sunrise, breathtakingly orange, unveiled Pallet town in the not to far distance. The chasm of Leandrooka they had passed, and on the edge of the world their feet had tiptoed. Sward green tusks lay ahead now, and with it the open fields and meadows and marchlands assisted Ash and Growlithe. Whiffed on by the strengthening wind; and as it screeched in their passing Ash saw the crest hang; and next to it a nose.

Ash and Growlithe ran under the arching crest. Pallet town exhibited a crest of splashing waters and fish Pokémon. It was with sore eyes the arch and the crest came to view. But it did not feel like home when they arrived. "Where are all the guards?" Ash glared at Growlithe. There were murmuring and rummaging wisps flying about. Then, as they found themselves under the arch and through the gate, came a searing purple flash from the south. Faint screams erupted from the docks as the clouds above them turned crimson.

"Mom," cried Ash and leapt through the horrified crowd, which had gathered in the streets and now gasped and screamed. The dark sky was washing ashore, and Ash saw the wheeling fish boat wobbling; something was stirring from under the surface. Then, as if it was a toy played with by a toddler in the shallow coastlines, eight cataclysmic tentacles dug through the wooden hull, and cut off the mast with unmatched force. The eight tentacles coiled round the boat and, without warning, sunk the ship were it thrashed.

Sir Devon, the old guardsman, shouted and cursed out his lungs at two trainers and twenty guardsmen. Their shining armour and pikes blinded Ash as he and Growlithe zigzagged their way through the ranks. Sir Devon paid them no attention. White flashes flashed here and there; Pokémon materialized into various shapes. A jolting, thunderous yellow light shot through the crowd and parted into lesser, yet deadly, lighting bolts. Ash dodged left into an alleyway and hid behind a black bag of garbage. The screaming would never end.

Two men shot passed him. One of them stopped and looked at Ash and said. "Hide there, they're too many."  
"What's going on?" Asked Ash as a loud bang followed by a lavender-greenish light changed the colour of the clouds.  
"It's the royals, they said we're hiding the professor."  
"Isn't he back yet?"  
A drumming sound flew with the winds. Consequently a cracking in the marble floor spurred open, slithering like an Ekans up the square, swallowing the man whole.  
Ash looked aghast for several moments. But time was pressing and he jumped the earthquake rift and urgently hastened to the outskirts of the town. Growlithe shadowed from behind.

SC

A rainbow of colours sprang to life from the window. Delilah ushered her body up and raised her eyelids forcefully. She leaned on the white frame as her eyes cheated her with gruesome pictures of death and destruction. The town square was shrivelling, and most of it had sunken down gigantic potholes. The laboratory was under siege; a hundred men, if not more, were barricading the structure. A handful of trainers in white lab coats fought back, keeping the charging force at bay. For now.

As though a freezing breeze came over her she froze shut to the frame, then, remembering her son, she leapt over the bed and darted to his room. The door smashed into the wall by the hinges. The room was quiet and unoccupied. His sheets were folded and unused, his clean laundry sat on the foot of the bed, like it had when she laid it there.

Her lips quivered. "Guard duty, that's what he said to me yesterday. Oh no." Tears streamed down her cheeks, creating woeful puddles hanging from the tip of her glistening cheekbones.

Dizzy and very tired Delilah stumbled down the hallways steps, and darted behind the stairs. In the shadows lay a chest, unknown to her son, with a lock attached to the hinge. She opened the top button on her rose peddled, with grey thorns slithering about, nightgown. A golden chain circled her throat and when she pulled it over her head there were two objects hanging from it. The ring had a thick, shiny band, and a yellow gemstone jammed around the shank. She put it on the forth finger on her left hand.

The other object was a key, which she jammed into the lock on the chest.

SC

The passage ahead went slightly upwards, which weakened Ash's thighs even further. He felt weary and fatigued, trudging onwards and up. Growlithe barked and did not let Ash rest; the canine locked his fangs on Ash's pants leg and wriggled him forward.

Ash was lying face down on the pebbles when a dark armoured figure leaned over him. The canine was sniffing the figure, raising his snout in the air around the stranger. He tracked round and round, but did not bark, nor did he attack.  
Ash's eye flickered. The fatigue was clutching to him like a swamp to a boot. As he sat up he saw the familiar blue eyes of his mother. "Oh Ash," she said with a muffled voice. Her mouth and cheeks were hidden behind a black mask.

In the caressing arms of his mother Ash passed out.

Growlithe guarded the door by throttling back and forth by the frame. Ash's head banged loudly, as though Growlithe or Pidgey had been dancing on it as he slept. Ash nodded to Growlithe and gave him a 'good boy' treat from his pocket. Which Growlithe demolished. On the nightstand next to a candleholder drenched in wax and a half eaten candle a note, with Ash's name on it, laid. He picked it up, scratched his eyes and read:

 _To Ash,_ it said.

 _I'm out fighting the foe. I hope to return to you and see that you are well, but I cannot heed the children crying. I will try to muster all the villagers I can and head to the pier. From there we'll travel to Fuchsia City. I cannot grasp the words I write: But you need to head out of town as fast as you can, take Growlithe and what only you can carry. I have left your, my sons, faith in your own hands. I pray to the Gods I will see your smile again. There is so much you don't know, too much._

 _Love you, mom._

 _Read the other letter._

 _PS: Fathers armour is downstairs in the kitchen next to a bag for you and a bag for Growlithe. They are packed already._

"What armour, and what letter," Ash said bewildered as another letter swayed in the air, heading to firm ground. Ash snatched it as it seemingly hovered above his bed.

 _To Ash:_

 _My son. This letter will come to you when mom thinks it perilous that you have it; sooner, I hope, than later. We saw wanderlust in your eyes the moment you were born, and therefore you'll find (wherever mom has hidden it) the gear I leave to you. My job is difficult and secretive and I write this letter in hopes you'll never have to read it. But if you do all I can say is sorry. I find solace in the thought that I will not be around if you read it. It pains me to think it might come true. Take my gear and my two rings. One was always meant for you, its blue gemstone as blue as your eyes.  
There is much you don't know about us, son. And much you'll never know too. But one thing to keep in mind is that you do not need to worry about your mother, she's a stubborn woman. It's why I fell in love with her. _

_I love you._

 _From:_

 _Papa._

Ash lifted his feet off the bed and, with pain gushing through his body, dashed into the kitchen. Growlithe followed on his heel. On the table, which was not a table anymore, lay two backpacks: one for a human and the other for a four-legged Pokémon. The crisscrossing stretcher, meant to stabilize the table, had weakened and given in by an unknown force. Its wooden legs had crackled and snapped off from under the top.

Neatly folded near the copper sink was the armour. Ash circled the wooden patches of the flattened table and lifted up a tunic that was lighter than the one he wore. It had patches of thick leather embroidered with tiny stretches of chainmail. But it was different than what Ash had seen before. They were small metal balls with almost no space between their straps. And they weighed nothing.  
Ash put the black armour on. Set the two rings on each index finger. And whipped the mask over his mouth. _Who the hell are my parents?_

Then he shimmied over to the bags and whipped it over his head, and coiled his arms within its laces. It was heavy on his frame, a metal bar dug into his lower back.

Then he strapped, and snapped, the bag around Growlithe – who spun and twirled and growled at the extra weight.

As they came near they saw the town in ruins. Bricks that used to be walls were turned into rubble. Window glass lay shattered and thatched houses were burning with unfathomable intensity. A mysterious and malevolent shade came over them from the north, and on its leash the winding, artificial tempest washed over the ghost town. Swords clung as they neared still; Ash released Pidgey – who squawked and flapped its wings in the cold breeze. Pidgey soared high up, yet Ash, through the thickening stone-dust, saw her silhouette clear as the morning sunrise on a blue sky. Then, as screams jolted and drummed his ears, metal-against-metal sung through the air, Ash's sight went elsewhere.

"Hold it there," said an armoured soldier. He wore glistening chain mail from his wrists to his shoulders. From there he wore an iron breastplate, which looked too big and too heavy on him. Growlithe did not heed the soldier's cry and leapt on him with exposed fangs and flammable throat. The soldier swung his heavy sword, but the straps on his breastplate and the shoulder paddings made it so that he could not swing the sword above breast level. Undefended and exposed on his left flank the canine jumped his arm and bit down, dripping his molten flames all over the squealing chainmail. The soldier cried and dropped his sword. With the loosened weight he rolled round and swung his free fist at the growling and wriggling canine. But it was too late, and again he cried a hollow scream. Growlithe was through his bone and the man, lessened by one elbow, pleaded for a quick ending.

Then suddenly, yet oddly late, as Ash had watched Growlithe fight, a young woman: a girl perhaps. Screamed into the dustland for aid.

Ash darted off leaving Growlithe to finish what he had started.

There, amongst the rubbles, he saw a new soldier, bearing the yellow crest, holding onto a girl's ponytail. She was on her knees with smears of black coal on her face. A ribbon was wrapped round her forearm – which had portrayed red roses and colourful gardens once, it was smeared with black coal-dust, too. And it was all she wore. Her blue eyes were crying. He was holding her firmly: not as if she was a person, but an object, to sell, maybe? Ash found his fury.

He had not heard the winding winds coiling their ways through the rubbles, nor had he spotted a shadow soldier tracking behind him with shadow steps.

Then came the blow to the back of Ash's head, which made him tumble downward and onwards through the crumbling bricks. Leaning and grasping for something to end the tumble he cried in pain and found no succour from the ruins.

The royal soldier, a sharp sword in hand, tipped closer to where Ash lay. Ash was on the ground grappling for a weapon to defend against the incoming swing. A short axe gleamed, as though highlighted by the Gods, inches from his outstretched hands; and he could pinch the grip with the tip of his finger. Desperately Ash tried to grab it and swing.

But the soldier, swaying his sword above his own head, was too quick. Ash rolled left, dodging the attack. The sword vibrated and whined as it bore down on pebbles. Again Ash found himself a little too far away from the short axe and his chance of winning. Breathing hard and with a drumming pain in the back of his head Ash staggered to his feet. The wind caught speed and with it came Pidgey swooping. The bird dove vertically from the crying clouds and, with twinkling talons, she bore down on the soldiers face and throat. The soldier dashed backwards, lodging his feet in a motionless body, and toggled onto his stomach.

Pidgey pecked through the man's iron helmet. He wriggled relentlessly and swept up his sword and hacked at the Pidgey. Pidgey pivoted off the man's crushed helmet and bleeding neck – hovering with flapping wings nearby in the air. The sword, which was too large for the man to swing whilst he was face down in the dirt, cheated his grip and fell on its master's neck.

Ash thanked Pidgey, who was already airborne, and swept both the short axe and the sword from the self-beheaded man.

Pidgey squawked a death cry.

Ash turned and saw a second soldier gripping the bird by its hind feather. Then, by all his force, hurled the small bird into the ground. It was the same man whom was gripping the innocent girl. Vigorously Ash charged the man with all his energy. The air around them had soared up when Pidgey crashed down, and a silhouette of the man was all Ash could make out in the orange dust cloud. Ash pivoted the first swing, using his speed and light armour to out-flank. The second swing tossed him to the ground – Ash had never fought any foe with any weapon in his life, nor came it natural to him as it did to his Pokémon. Fatigued he held the sword up horizontally while the talented swordsman hacked at him a third and forth time. Ash crawled backward to gain space, and stood up with the thought of saving Pidgey from the clutches of death. The soldier danced swiftly and found Ash swaying a few feet away. Ash was leaning against a set of bricks, which had been, mere hours before, a bakery.

The soldier glared through his helmet and smiled as he grasped Ash's wrists, twisting them. With an agonizing scream the boy was hurled to the ground. "I shall enjoy this. Your dead Pokémon killed my friend, now you and it will share his faith." He strode unceremonious in a semi-circle, his sword swaying up and down, left and right with a push of his hand. Ash, taking advantage of the soldiers gloating victory stroll, swept the axe off the dying earth and hid it under his chest.

Then, as the sunrays crept through gaps in the weeping clouds and glistened onto the shaft of the mighty sword swinging from high above, Ash rolled aside and hammered the axe into the soldier's heel. The soldier toggled as blood busted out of the severed foot; which was the only thing of him standing upright. Tasting iron Ash made quick finish of the squealing man and rested the axe in the sheathing of his throat. Thick red fluids rained onto his face and upper body from below. Ash, unwillingly drinking it, was shocked of how much liquid one person could carry, and how fast it was drenching him. The axe rested in the soldier like it would rest on a stub of wood: no slithering cracks in it. Yet through gaps of his skin, near his blood vessels, blood was flying. Ash wanted to throw up on the dead man, which he deserved. The royal infantry soldier was mindlessly blinking with one eye and twitching his left leg, nearly kicking Ash's shin.

"It won't do you nothing," gulped Ash as he leaned too close to his sprayings.

And then ran over to where Pidgey last lay.

Ash leaned his head so far back his neck and upper back crackled as burning wood. Thanking the Gods he did: not certain if he even believed in them. Pidgey's chest went up and down. Ash fetched a needle from his pack: a healing potion. And jabbed the sharp tip down, and into the Pokémon's heart it pressed. Then, with a syringe full of the red liquid, he pushed the piston down. There was a lengthy silence.

Then, as if life itself was speaking, Pidgey leapt up and squawked with life through her beak. She then vanished within the ball that Ash held out, where she could rest safely.

Ash wheeled round vast rifts in the earth and jolted to the town centre, where dark orange torches flickered near the harbour and the laboratory. The cupcake twirling towers and the bridge of stone linking them held thirty or so archers. Golden arrows where oiled and dipped in large flaming, and then released into the heart of the city. They soared above the luminous streets. The laboratory stood on a small hill with cliffs all around it. There was a narrow pathway up to the entrance, but that was barred shut with barbwire and guard outposts.

The archers' weren't aiming on people or Pokémon. The arrows flew and ignited thatched roofs, which burned even under the heavy drizzle. A beam of blue water crashed into the left tower; and steaming up as sparkling stars, and as thick as fog, was vaporized water; limbs, bones and blood plummeted down to the wasteland Pallet town now was. Alongside green tiles and grey stones. No glimmer or glare came from the sprouting cloud of grey and bronze as it, writhingly, approached and shaded the valley, and the harbour, and the rest of the laboratory.

"Good," Ash shouted. As he stood alone near a single sided brick wall, which was once a home, the wind jabbed him from the side. Thousands upon thousands corns of sand stabbed him as though they were flying daggers.

"Without them having vision of us we'll have time to regroup. If anyone is even alive that is." And with that horrid thought he sprang with all his energy to the heart of the battle, and as he did Growlithe, his trusted companion, came forth with gritted and bloodied teeth.

The thudding of hooves or heavy feet sprung to life as Ash and Growlithe sprang through the alley, nearly crashing into an enormous blue Pokémon.

"Blastoise," it said, and Ash's face lit up.

"Grandpa!" he said looking up at the blue-scaled turtle Pokémon. It was something off with it; its features were smoother, younger even.  
"Are you crazy. I could've blown you to pieces," said a familiar female voice. "Scaring people like that…" a loll came over them as both parties waited. The dawn rose slowly in the east. A journey it would require to end the crawling shadows over Pallet town. "Who are you again?" she asked with a steady voice.  
"Ash," Ash said, steady too.  
"That's right." She said, her low hanging brows climbing. She had the rubber band in her hair still, a little tilted. The sword with the figuring was grasped in her hand; bathed in red.  
"And you are?" Ash asked as a dull gust of wind wafted a scent so sweet and intoxicating he felt the need closed his eyes, focusing on it only.  
"Leaving." She answered. "No, not from the battle. We have many foes to end still," she added seeing the surprising in Ash's countenance. "Blastoise fought off the men on the towers, but we were chased back here. And I have yet to avenge my employers" She said, then darting off into the gloom.

"Wait, hold on." Ash said, jolting after her. Growlithe disappeared, alongside Ash, into the thicket.

SC

The drumming of war came over them. Delilah and her Kadabra was near the laboratory when Misty's Blastoise had pulverized them. She had watched as Misty and her Pokémon heroically led the enemy astray.

Rounding up the surviving villagers had been an easy task; no more than fifty remained. And, now, they were all hidden; and by the fire they lay under prismatic sheets. Not even the crackling of the fire was heard from under the invisible blanket, or the children whimpering.

"Peace is not an option with these people. And they call themselves humans?" she spat. "They're following and wrecking havoc upon those who cannot defend against it."

"My lady," Sir Devon uttered. Terra's tavern had been turned to a shelter, with sandbags isolating the structure. It rumbled in the walls. Then, as Sir Devon spoke again a thunderous roar gusted past. "We're doomed if we don't parlay or surrender. Think about the children." He ducked as a yellow light; leading a hundred lesser lights materialized a few feet down the street and beamed through the square.

Delilah's glooming and empty gaze met the blackened walls. She felt doomed, along with the town; all she hoped was that her son had taken footing and ran. Streaming heat warmed her face from deep inside the black walls and, as she turned away from those she could not see, a tear was winding down her cheek.

"We'll take the innocent children, women and men to the pier. There we'll follow the tides and hope that the waters will be kind." She could taste the salt sea spray as she spoke.

Pallet town was built by a hardened fish people near the open sea, each side a bay or pier delved, and round the outskirt town was a wooden wall, and by each pathway to the bay or pier was a gate. East and west they faced. The arching gate was facing east, and mists would linger close when the night grew cold.

Yet it was a lucky gate for all fishermen and merchants who came from the eastern sea line. Walking through the arch gave luck and fortune, the myths said. The western gate was old and had withering birch as a frame. The road leading to the pier had more mould and orange dust than pebbles and stone. And outside of the gate hammered with sickened trees there was a beaten path, which led down a narrow and gentle hill.

On its left there was a valley stretching further into the forest than sight could see. There, within the winding trenches, was a hidden cave. Weeds and bushes of all sort grew and sheathed the entrance, for inside there were rumoured to lay ancient beings of cataclysmic power. Delilah and her Kadabra, with her people in toe, plodded through the withering gate to the west. There were fifty souls in a cluster behind her, their feet wobbled and their hearts weighing them down. Onwards and south they stalked, avoiding the cataclysmic rifts and the infantry troops. Delilah ordered Kadabra to protect them; and with that a prismatic flash of light sheeted them like a blanket in the cold of night. They, as long as they kept some lengths away, were protected and invisible under Kadabra's wrapping.

"The worst is over," Delilah said as they neared the Tentacool statue. It was intended as good fortunes. The bronze figuring was dripping with green colour as though it was crying. A salty sea spray and a lengthy moulding process had almost washed all the bronze off. And it was now a pitiful sight.

"But," muttered a young girl. "Aren't the coming after us?" "

We will travel faster across the sea,»"said Delilah, and forced a smile and a brave countenance.

"What? How will we manage?" said a battered farmer, astonished.

"We'll sail with Pokémon."

"We have not enough. Do you not see? You've doomed us, caged us by the coastline. The open sea will sink us; it is treacherous."

The villagers started gathering behind them – dividing amongst themselves, as if a vote was to be made. Nervously, and one by one, the towns people, who were once in unity, divided. "What will you do then?" asked Delilah, baffled by all those who sided with death.

"We're from the deep ends, we're born here, moulded by it. We can venture there too."

"don't be foolish. The path has sunken and the wild is growing restless. You cannot live on bark and berries, and who's to say that Viridian will let you enter? They do not see kindly to refugees."  
"And Fuchsia, will they let you pass or enter?" he said, anger dwelling on his face. "I say Viridian will take us in. I say we of the outskirts know how to fend ourselves against the woodland shadows. No passage or muddy trail will hinder us." Most of the towns people roared with the battered farmer and, gathering their force, trenched on into the woodlands. From there, Delilah guessed, they would take the path of Millandrel and up steep hills and through narrow valley's. An eastern route, a smart route, but the deep ends were unforgiving and unkind to all.

Ten children stayed behind. Eight trudged, and vanished into the vast woodlands. Ragnhild was no amongst the living.

"We can't come back, not now, not when it's been decided to split." Sir Devon said through gritted teeth. "Fools." He was angry, and rightly so.

"I agree, we'll carry on and pray for those who follow hollow men." And so ventured twenty-three men, women and children on Lapras and Dewgong's and Seadra's into the dawn as the sun flashed red on the sky, and chased away the dreadful blackened curtains.

SC

"We can't do that," the girl said. "You're too valuable to the future of our cause. We cannot wait for you to join us willingly, or worse. Surrender." Oak hadn't seen the shadow below. Through tables and patterned cupboards the silent mist tracked, rounding the tiles and flooding it in darkness.  
"What is this?" he asked wearily as the thick black smoke coiled up his legs, slithered into his pockets and vanished under his clothes. It dragged him swiftly away from the door, then, as his heavy eyelids fought watered eyes, he grew drowsy. "Sleep," whispered the rebel girl. She was smiling.

"You have doomed my people and my family. Hundreds will die."  
"A risk we willingly take; and when the future is safe you will thank us."

…

SC

To all who have read this far: Thank you. I hope you all have enjoyed the tale. . Write back in the comment section, to me, favourite and follow if you wish . And I am truly sorry for the mistakes I make with grammar. I hope the story grammar to most, if not all, of you who read it. If so I am pleased. And if you didn't enjoy it, then I would recommend that you stop reading it. Cause it will continue like it is.


End file.
